LAST UPDATE | 8 May 2025

A FORMER SOLDIER is facing up to three decades behind bars after being convicted of murdering his south Dublin girlfriend at their Spanish holiday hotel.

Jurors found Keith Byrne guilty after three days of deliberations of strangling Kirsty Ward to death after she told him she was leaving him.

The 34-year-old Irishman had claimed during his trial in the eastern Spanish city of Tarragona that the 36-year-old mum-of-one took her own life at their four-star Magnolia Hotel in the popular Costa Daurada resort of Salou.

He described himself as a “respectful and intelligent” father-of-three who would never commit an act of domestic violence – and demonised Kirsty as someone who could be “four people in one day” and who he claimed made their romance “toxic”.

The trial judge announced he was retiring to consider his sentence after the jury decision late last night – as is normal in Spain – and Byrne is not expected to find out for nearly a month how much time he will have to serve.

A private prosecutor acting for Kirsty’s family said she was still seeking the 30-year sentence she argued for before and during the trial.

Public prosecutor Javier Goimil urged the judge to jail him for 20 years for his 2 July 2023 crime, lowering his initial pre-trial demand by a year as he accepted Byrne’s prior use of drink and drugs as a mitigating circumstance after jurors ruled he had “diminished cognitive and volitional faculties” when he killed Kirsty.

The killer was led handcuffed from the court after learning he was now a convicted criminal after nearly two years on remand in prison following his arrest.

Goimil, a domestic violence specialist, rubbished Byrne’s court claim that Kirsty took her own life during his closing speech to the jury last Wednesday on the final day of the murder trial.

He claimed the former soldier, who had been living in Duleek, Co Meath, decided: “You’re mine or you’re nobody’s” and strangled his girlfriend to death because she wanted to leave him.

He said the forensic evidence pointed to Kirsty had been strangled from behind between 8pm and 10pm on 2 July, 2023 after “incapacitating herself” with alcohol and cocaine.

He told the court: “Byrne has adapted his version of events of what happened in that timeframe nearly two years on in accordance with the evidence he’s learnt there is against him.

He added: “What’s occurred here is a violent and painful death, a strangulation from behind where someone is pulling from the front to the back. This was not a suicide.”

He also said: “She didn’t leave a note for her son or her siblings or her mum and what’s more she had bought a plane ticket back to Dublin for 4 July.

“Kirsty’s relationship with Byrne was very toxic, very intense and very emotional. She decided to end it during the week they stayed at the hotel in Salou and her partner couldn’t accept that decision.

“His mindset at that moment was: ‘Or you’re mine or you’re nobody’s. You, woman, are no-one to say you’re going to detach yourself from me the man and have your own independent life.

“That was why he killed her the way he did.”

He also said the amount of alcohol Kirsty had consumed before being killed would have impacted significantly on her ability to defend herself.

Kirsty’s mum Jackie Ward described Byrne as someone she “didn’t like” and “didn’t trust” on day one of the trial on 23 April and said she had found out after her daughter’s death she had planned to leave him during their “make or break” holiday.

She was asked as she gave evidence whether she thought her daughter, whose son Evan was 14 when she died, could have taken her own life but replied angrily: “She did everything for her son. She would never ever leave him. She would never do that to him.”

Jurors started deliberating on Monday after the May Bank Holiday. Byrne’s defence lawyer Jordi Cabre had been seeking his client’s acquittal before the jury verdict and afterwards asked the judge to hand down the “minimum sentence”.

Following the jury verdict, Kirsty Ward’s family said in a statement: “Our family wish to thank our private prosecutor Estela Cortes and her team for guiding, supporting and representing Kirsty, her son and our family at this very difficult and painful time.”

They also thanked “Javier Goimil the public prosecutor for his commitment and passion; the Spanish investigation teams and police for their expertise, empathy and understanding; and the jury for seeing and believing in what was the truth about our beautiful Kirsty.”

“Our family now request our privacy to be respected, while we grieve and come to terms with all that has happened during the past two years.”

Jackie Ward described her daughter after her death as a “fantastic friend” to her parents and “an absolutely adored daughter.”

An online fundraising appeal Kirsty’s family launched before the trial to help fund their legal costs has so far raised more than €32,000.

It emerged following Byrne’s Spanish arrest that he was wanted in England by Royal Military Police for going AWOL after he left for Ireland in 2017.

Reports in Ireland last March said Spanish prosecutors intended to interview at least two of his former partners about assisting the case by giving background information about him.